Keeping up with the Joneses in Clunes
Most people are aware of Clunes’ gold mining history. It was home to Victoria's first registered discovery, made by one William Campbell in 1850. Up to the 1890s, gold powered the town’s growth and gave it many fine buildings which survive relatively intact from ornate public halls to austere worker cottages.
But when mining eventually came to an end, Clunes, like many resource boom towns, started to wither. By the 1930s the population had drastically declined and the place was practically a ghost town. Those who remained had to find jobs in the factories of Ballarat, as agricultural workers or they went hungry.
One of the families who remained were the Jones family. They were descended from William Jones, a native of north Wales who came to work the mines in the 1860s. While the elder Jones left Clunes for richer pickings in Western Australia, many of his children and grandchildren remained in what became a quiet backwater.
One of those descendants was Lloyd Jones, born 1933, who produced a book in 1989 about his childhood years, Just a Boy From the Bush. It is a highly detailed account of life growing up during the depression years in Clunes and regional Victoria and a window into another world.